“Beth, you are to be given a birthday party! It must also be a Valentine party, as you are a Valentine child. I had planned to celebrate you, but Lady Harrowdene has a Valentine-birthday idea that puts mine quite in the shade! It will---- Oh, Lady Pat, I believe I will not tell her about it, after all! It is a week distant. We’ll let Beth get gray and ugly puzzling over it; we won’t tell her another syllable than that she is to have a party!” Aunt Alida stopped herself short and laughed at Beth with her flashing dark eyes. Beth did not grow gray, nor did she seem to those that loved her in the least likelihood of becoming ugly as the week before her birthday crawled past. But she gave a great deal of thought to the celebration of the day. So did Natalie and Alys; Dirk professed indifference to all parties, but secretly he speculated, too, on what new form this celebration could take. Mrs. Cortlandt would not give either of her own children the least hint about it, for fear Beth should hear it; they all rightly thought that Mrs. Cortlandt was having a fine time keeping the mystery shrouded. St. Valentine’s day came at last. Early in the afternoon Frieda attired Beth in the strangest costume! Beth did not know whether to like it or not; she certainly had the gravest doubt of its suitability. Yet Aunt Alida always knew, not merely what was pretty, but what was appropriate. This gown was blue, light blue in its upper part, dark blue below, and it had velvet stripes of yellow bordering its tunic and rings of yellow velvet on the skirt. The material was the gauziest silk imaginable; everything about the frock was exquisite, but the effect altogether was, as Beth doubtfully told herself, “queer.” However, she could not voice her doubt and in a moment Frieda had slipped over the whole costume a straight, sheathing sort of a dull yellow silken garment, like a scant raincoat. It had a yellow silk hood which Frieda drew forward over Beth’s hair, carefully arranging it so that the whalebones in it lay so that they would keep the hood from disarranging her hair. “For pity’s sake, Frieda, what is it? It makes me look like a big chrysalis!” cried Beth, surveying her sleek gray figure in the glass with disfavor. Frieda clapped her hands. “Isn’t that fine, Miss Beth!” she cried. “Just what it’s meant to look like! And to think you knew it at once!” “Well, my goodness! I don’t want to be a chrysalis!” cried Beth. Then she remembered and felt ashamed. “But Aunt Alida knows,” she added loyally. “Anyhow, I should think she’d made you look nice often enough, Beth Bristead, for you to wear what she wanted you to! Maybe Aunt Alida wants me to be a chrysalis to eat salad! Am I ready, Frieda?” “Yes, Miss Beth, you are. I’m to go with you to help you and your cousins,” said Frieda, making sure that her black gown and white linen cap and apron were as they should be. “Going with us? Are we going somewhere, Frieda?” cried Beth.